In short: Criterio de Gestión 7/2025 issued by the Directorate General for Migration Management (DGGM) establishes that unaccompanied foreign minors' residence authorisation in Spain, and also their inscription certificate (cédula de inscripción), take effect from the day the minor was placed under the care of the child protection service, not from the date of the decision that grants them.
Legal basis: article 35.7 of LO 4/2000 states that the residence of a minor under guardianship in Spain by a Public Administration, by judicial decision, or by another entity is considered regular for all purposes; at the request of the body exercising guardianship, and once it is proven that returning to their family or country of origin is not possible, they are granted a residence authorisation whose effects are backdated to when they were placed under the protection services. Article 172.4 of the Regulation (RD 1155/2024) repeats this rule: the authorisation lasts 2 years and its effect is backdated to that same date.
What this criterion adds: it unifies that the same rule also applies to the inscription certificate (art.210.8 of the Regulation): its effect must also be backdated to the date the minor was placed under protection services. And that the residence authorisation must be granted with a start date equal to that date, not the date of the decision.
Why it matters: the minor is in a regular situation for all purposes from the moment they enter the protection system, even if the administrative decision takes time to arrive. This can matter for counting later time limits, such as accrued legal residence time.
Who requests it: the authorisation is granted at the request of the body exercising guardianship of the minor (the region's child protection service), not the minor themselves.
For how care-system places for unaccompanied minors are distributed among Spain's regions, see Royal Decree 556/2026: a separate rule about organising the system, not about this effective-date question.
Official source: Criterio de Gestión 7/2025 (PDF).
Informational only; check the official source and a professional for your specific case.
